


True Crime

by Morpheus626



Category: Queen (Band)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-12 17:49:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28514481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morpheus626/pseuds/Morpheus626
Summary: A drabble request from Sammy on the DL Server, in return for helping me edit my chapbook!Prompt/Synopsis: Brian is going through a true crime phase, and it’s fine. Really, the other lads don’t mind at all.Except when he scares himself too badly to sleep after marathons of true crime docs, and drops the occasional horrific fact in otherwise calm and small-talk levels of conversation (sometimes about random cases, other times about ones he’s particularly interested in), oh, and if he panics a bit/also wants to play detective when they wind up snowed in during a tour in the US and a prisoner escapes from a local high-security facility...Then it gets interesting.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	True Crime

“It is three in the morning, and I still hear the TV,” Freddie grumbled into his pillow. “I love my friend. I do. I love him.” 

He reached a hand up, and slapped at the hotel wall as hard as he could. 

“I’ll turn it down!” Brian called through it. 

“No! Go to bed! I am not hauling you out of here tomorrow morning!” Freddie shouted. “Because John will already be hauling me and Roger, and he’s got enough on his hands with that!” 

The TV volume next door dropped, but Freddie could still hear the high strings as soundtrack to another true crime documentary. He dropped his head into his pillow, and sighed. He was going to sleep if it was the last thing he did. 

For half an hour, he slept hard. Not hard enough to ignore the knocking at his hotel room door, however. 

“Hi,” Brian looked exhausted. “How’s your night going?” 

“It is-” Freddie leaned back into the room to check the clock on the wall. “Five in the fucking morning. How do you think I’m doing?” 

“Great,” Brian nodded. “Feeling lonely?” 

Freddie rubbed at an eye and sighed. “Look, if you’re coming onto me, I’m fine with that. But just be straight out with it, if you’re doing it now.” 

“I...I’m flattered,” Brian blushed. “But I didn’t mean that, actually; thank you though. It’s-well-have you ever thought about how easy it is to die?”

Freddie shook his head. “No more of those documentaries after a show. It’s too late for you, obviously.”

Brian looked to his feet. “I guess, yeah.”

“Don’t just stand there,” Freddie murmured, and opened the door wide. “Get in. We both have...technically two more hours to sleep. But if we pretend we don’t hear John knocking, we can probably make it three.”

\---

“You know, the first-”

“No,” John cut Brian off quickly. 

“What? I’m just saying-” 

“That’s alright, you can tell me later,” John tried again, incredibly conscious of the fans watching them, eagerly awaiting signatures on their shirts and other merchandise.

Brian frowned. “I was only wanting to tell them something interesting I learned last night. Did you ever hear about the first murder committed with a handgun in England? Because I hadn’t, and-”

“And they found who did it, and now we’re all much safer,” John smiled widely, quickly signing the merchandise they handed over, and shoving it into Brian’s hands until he finally signed too.

The fans dashed off, not upset, but wearing quizzical looks, and John let out the breath he’d been holding.

“Why do you do that?”

“Do what?” Brian asked. “Make conversation? Yes, how dare I talk to fans.”

“That is not what I mean, and you fucking know it,” John said. “Those girls were maybe sixteen! They just wanted to look at us, get our signatures, and run off giggling. Not hear about a murder from 1800!”

“It was 1536, actually,” Brian noted. “But that’s what I was trying to talk about; most people I think wouldn’t expect it to have been that year, they’d been thinking, ‘oh 1800 or 1900 or something later’, but no! It’s wonderfully interesting.”

“To you, yes,” John sighed. “Not to kids who, let’s be real here, are only interested in us because they like our music, and we’re decently pretty.”

Brian frowned. “If the latter, why didn’t they ask for Freddie and Roger?”

John gave him a hard look. “Did you just insult your own looks, so you could insult me?”

“I sacrifice what I must, when I must,” Brian replied. “Also, I sort of meant it.”

“Is there a documentary I can make you watch to fix your self-esteem?” John asked, exasperated.

“No, but! Let me tell you about this other one I watched. Fairly recent actually, but part of how the victims were baited in had to do with self-esteem and things like that. So...”

John smiled, and nodded, and listened for the first five minutes of Brian’s lecture. He couldn’t help that he faded into working on riffs in his head after that, it was simply the natural reaction to such a lecture.

And if he got part of a song out of listening to Brian cheerfully tell him about someone being gutted, then he could at least claim the conversation as productive.

\---

“Are you really going to spend all night looking out the window?” Roger asked, as he fought with the vibrating bed. “Christ, I hate this place. Come lay down, will you?”

“I’m just keeping an eye out,” Brian said. He had been up against the window of their room in the shitty motel, peering out the blinds, into the snowstorm that had stranded them in the American Midwest.

“That escaped prisoner is not going to come here,” Roger sighed, jamming his fingers at the remote for the bed. “Can you at least help me turn this fucking thing off? You barely accidentally sit on a remote, and this is what you get! Meanwhile we have to punch the remote for the television; I’ll have to kick the door to open it next!”

Brian sighed and trotted over, barely pushing the button on the remote.

It turned off violently, nearly tossing Roger off of it, but Brian didn’t notice, already back at his post at the window.

“What good is worrying over it going to do?” Roger asked softly. “Are you prepared to fight him off, or something?”

“If I had to,” Brian replied, not turning away, though he shivered as a gust of wind blew at the window.

“What makes you think he’ll show up here anyway?” Roger sighed. He didn’t exactly want to entertain Brian when he was in this sort of a mood, but ignoring it didn’t seem to be useful either. On top of all that, he was making him nervous, even as he knew that it was silly to feel that way.

They were hardly a target for an escaped prisoner, after all. That the man was reported to be violent, and had been put away for the serial murders of many local and regional musicians was unnerving, but that alone couldn’t possibly be a reason for panic, or everything Brian was doing.

“He escaped from somewhere that few people have ever escaped from before,” Brian scoffed. “And he’s in a snowstorm, probably freezing to death as he travels. And we’re only five miles from the facility. Where would you go, if it was you?”

“I...don’t really want to contemplate anything to do with that hypothetical,” Roger replied uncomfortably. “The things he did to those people...I could never.”

“No, I know that,” Brian said, and finally came over to sit by him on the bed. “I couldn’t either. It was horrible; he treated their bodies like-”

“That’s alright,” Roger interrupted him and swallowed hard. “Hearing it the first time over dinner was plenty, thanks.”

“Right,” Brian nodded. “I mean, he might not. He might just die out there before he gets anywhere at all.”

“Good lord, they should put you on the news,” Roger muttered sarcastically. “A bundle of cheer and joy, you are.”

“Well, they said it’s what, negative twenty Fahrenheit, with the windchill? I’m sure he isn’t in a winter coat of any kind.”

“I think we need to talk about something else,” Roger mumbled and lay back on the bed. “Something happy.”

“I’m not trying to worry you, honestly,” Brian said. “I’m sorry if that’s what I’m doing.”

“It’s alright,” Roger sighed. “That said, what’s the cutest animal you’ve ever seen, hm? Let’s give that topic a try.”

“Saw a fox in the garden before we left home,” Brian said with a shrug. “He was cute.”

“He? You’ve named him, haven’t you?”

“Chester, and he’s a delight, don’t you rag on him,” Brian replied indignantly.

“I’m n-”

The door to their room shook as someone banged on it, hard.

“Um. I’m not ragging on him,” Roger continued shakily as he tried to ignore the sound. “Just funny that you-”

The doorknob shook, and the sound of hands scrabbling at it made them both jump.

“Someone’s out there drunk, at the wrong room,” Brian laughed nervously. “They’ll go soon, I’m sure.”

Roger nodded, and gulped. “Yeah. So, about Chester-”

The door jolted in its frame, as if it was being kicked.

“Chester is wonderful, but what’s really interesting is how movable that dresser probably is,” Brian said, already climbing off the bed towards it.

“Fantastic point,” Roger jumped up and followed him, helping to drag the dresser in front of the door. “What else could we stack here, if we were so inclined?”

The sound of someone at the window was what finally did them both in, and Roger didn’t feel an ounce of shame at nearly leaping into Brian’s arms.

“May I say,” Roger whispered as they backed away from the window. “If we’re going to die, I’m glad it’s with you.”

“Because I knew the murderer might show up here, so you were sort of forewarned?”

“Because you’re my friend, and it’s a comfort to have you with me,” Roger scoffed. “Honestly Bri, we’re going to die, and-”

“Open the fucking door!” Freddie’s voice was like a choir of angels, even as he screeched. “It is freezing out here, and this fucking spare key won’t work, and-”

They ran to move the dresser and yanked open the door.

There stood Freddie and John, their suitcases in hand, covered in a crust of wind-blown snow.

“Oh, it’s only you two,” Roger sighed. “Thank goodness.”

“Only us?” John muttered. “Move!”

“Why on earth are you two out in this?” Brian asked as he forced the door shut behind them, the wind fighting him every step of the way.

Freddie whipped around, tossed his suitcase to the floor and gave them both frenzied look. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. The motel staff were supposed to call you!”

“Our heater broke,” John said. “We’ve been trying to huddle down in our room for hours, but we couldn’t feel our hands or feet. The motel has no other rooms open to move us too, so they said they’d be calling you guys and letting you know we were going to share with you.”

“I’m so glad it wasn’t the prisoner,” Brian sighed happily. “We’ve been sitting in here, scaring ourselves out of our wits, thinking he might show up here!”

“If you hadn’t opened that fucking door, there would have been a murder,” Freddie muttered. “And enough of this true crime shit. This is all it gets you, scared and willing to let your friends die in a blizzard as a result.”

“We wouldn’t have let you die,” Roger scoffed. “Why didn’t you shout earlier, instead of trying to break the fucking door down?”

“I didn’t know if you would hear u-”

The room phone rang, and Roger rushed to pick it up. “Yeah, we know, they’re safe with us n-. Oh. Thank you. We’ll keep our door locked, yeah.”

He set the phone down gently. “Erm. They’ve spotted the prisoner about a mile from here. We’ve been advised to lock our door and make sure the window is closed tightly. Apparently the woman he carjacked an hour or so ago might have mentioned we were in town.”

Silence fell for a few moments, and four sets of eyes shot to the door, then to Brian.

His eyes went wide, then he took a deep breath. “Dresser in front of the door to start. Then we’ll see what else is heavy enough to put on top of and in front of that. Maybe we can find something to cover the window, and we could keep the lights off...”

“Did you by chance watch any documentaries where the victims survived?” John asked as they started to move, tearing apart the room to create their barricade.

“No,” Brian winced. “But there’s something! We could be the first to survive at the hands of this man!”

They frowned.

“Um. We’ll just not talk about that for now,” Brian continued. “At least we’re together?”

“Yeah,” Roger said softly, and patted his shoulder. “Now help me carry the TV to try and block the window.”


End file.
